Guide #14: How to templatize a service business

How can you untie your time from your revenue?

If you're running a service business, such as being a freelancer, consultant, agency or even a trade business, you will likely have faced the double-edged sword that is the service business model. There's some good, and some bad and they go hand in hand.

The good: you can charge a much higher hourly rate than you would if you did the same job for a company.

The bad: you're still stuck on an hourly rate. Your revenue is directly tied to your time. If you don't work, you don't get paid. And to increase your revenue, you need to work more. As a Tiny Empire, we want to be able to do the opposite, more revenue and less time.

So the question is, how can we untie our time from our revenue?

The answer is…

Templatization

Let me explain.

By standardizing as many parts of the business as possible, we're able to re-use processes, assets and provided services to decrease the amount of time needed to provide the same amount of output.

The main way to do this is to standardize the business itself.

Niche down

This is by far the biggest win, if you’re willing to change your business offering. The idea is to make the service you offer more specialized, so that instead of offering a generalized service, you have a very specific, narrow offering.

Let's start with an example.

Say you’re a freelance web developer and you take on any type of web development project that comes your way . This may mean that you end up working on completely different projects each month. One month may be an asset management tool for a wealth management firm and the next month may be a job portal for a waste company. The result is that each project has very little overlap and you need to treat each job as a unique new project and build from scratch each time.

Now let's say that you focus purely on one specific type of project. You decide to only build asset management tools for wealth management firms. What positive effects does this have on your business?

Firstly, each project is now similar and you can re-use a lot of the basic design and functionality, making it bespoke as needed.

This means you can work far fewer hours on each project and deliver the same results.

But that's going to impact your income as you’re still charging hourly. In this case, you switch to a fixed project rate. The client gets the same value, but in less time (which is even more valuable to them) so you can charge the same amount as you would have charged if you built it from scratch. The result is that you deliver the same end product, in much less time and get paid the same amount.

Templatize your processes

The effect of changing the speciality of the business, means you also simplify your other processes which are silently costing you time and possibly money. For example, pricing the job is now much easier as the service is standardized and you can assign fixed rates, rather than scoping out many jobs, many of which you don't win and therefore waste time on pricing. Your other processes can also be standardized to allow a much more efficient business. This includes:

• Sales pipeline (targeted clients, fixed pricing)

• Finances (fixed pricing leads to less cashflow analysis)

• Contracts (services are standardized so you can have templated contracts)

• Billing (again standardized)

• Project mangement (standardized phases that you can use a tool like Notion to manage, then just duplicate for each client)

The list goes on. By having a standardized service, you can then standardize every other part of the business too. The benefits filter down. Not only is your main service much easier to deliver, the entire customer communication is simplified and your internal processes are simplified too.

So those are all the major wins, but won't this also affect how many customers you can get, since you're niching down your market? Yes and no.

Opportunities

Let's start with the positive.

By narrowing your market, you can now pinpoint who your customers are (in this example, wealth management firms) and solely target those customers. This makes your sales and marketing activities much easier. You can build relationships purely with wealth management firms, you can spend time and money purely on targeting wealth management professionals (e.g. communities, newsletter ads, social ads) and you can easily and quickly establish yourself as the "wealth management software expert" on social media by posting on this topic solely. You'd be amazed at how fast you can dominate a niche in this way - just make sure it's a niche where people are willing to spend money. You can even brand yourself and your company as the specialist in these areas.

Risks

So that's the positive. What's the risk here. Well if you're already running a successful service business and get a lot of inbound referrals then are you going to have to turn a lot of these customers away if you start to focus on a specific niche?

Ultimately, yes.

But not straight away.

You don’t want to kill your business, so you need to do this cautiously. My approach would be to start a separate brand for your niche business with it’s own dedicated site and rebrand yourself on social media towards this niche and start your sales + marketing for that brand immediately, but keep your main business open too. The niche business is now a sub-business of your main company. You can keep on taking on work through your main company, whilst building the customer base of the niche business. Ideally, if the niche business works, you will be able to transition over to exclusively working on this as it should have a much better revenue to work ratio than the generalized business.

You can always keep the main business open as well so that you can take on other projects in different niches if there is a downturn in your primary niche at a later date.

Ideas for niches

If you already have a service business, your best bet is to offer the service that has been most popular with previous clients. You have a jumping off point as you’ve already done a lot of the ground work which you can now hopefully re-use.

If you’ve not started your service business yet, but you aim to, here are some ideas on how to take a generalized service offering across several different industries and specialize them into a more niche service offering.

Freelance Writing specialities

• Technical Writing for Software Companies

• Legal Content for Law Firms

• Fashion and Beauty Product Descriptions

• Travel Destination Guides

• Educational Curriculum Development

• Financial and Investment Articles

• Green Energy and Sustainability Reports

• Real Estate Listing Descriptions

• Parenting and Childcare Blogs

Graphic Design specialities

• Logo and Branding for Coffee Shops and Cafes

• E-book Cover Design for Authors

• Infographics for Technology Startups

• Product Packaging Design for Beauty Brands

• Website Graphics for Fitness Trainers

• Event Posters for Music and Arts Festivals

• Restaurant Menu Design for a specific Cuisine

• App Interface Design for Healthcare Apps

• Social Media Graphics for Nonprofits

Online Tutoring or Teaching specialities

• Mathematics Tutoring for High School Students

• Language Learning Classes for Expats

• Coding and Programming Courses for Beginners

• Art and Creativity Classes for Seniors

• Science Enrichment for Homeschooled Children

• Professional Development Training for Small Business Owners

Social Media Management

• Instagram Management for Fashion Brands

• LinkedIn Strategy for B2B Companies

• Pinterest Marketing for Craft and DIY Businesses

• Twitter Engagement for Tech Startups

• Facebook Advertising for Local Restaurants

• YouTube Channel Management for Influencers

• Snapchat Marketing for Event Planners

• TikTok Growth for Entertainment Industry

• Nonprofit Awareness on Instagram

• Health and Wellness Promotion on Social Media

Web Development specialities

• E-commerce Website Development for Handmade Crafts

• Portfolio Websites for Freelance Photographers

• Educational Platforms for Online Tutors

• Blogging Websites for Food Bloggers

• Community Forums for Niche Enthusiast Groups

• Real Estate Listings Websites

• Personal Branding Websites for Influencers

• Membership Sites for Health and Fitness Coaches

• SaaS Website Development

• Nonprofit Website Design and Development

Technical Support specialities

• Small Business Network Setup and Maintenance

• E-commerce Website Technical Support

• Remote Learning Technology Support for Schools

• Cybersecurity Solutions for Small Enterprises

• Cloud Computing Support for Startups

• Software Installation and Troubleshooting Services

Online Coaching or Consulting specialities

• Health and Nutrition Coaching for Seniors

• Career Transition Consulting for Veterans

• Life Coaching for Millennials

• Financial Planning for Young Families

• Executive Coaching for Tech Industry

• Digital Marketing Consulting for Small Businesses

• Startup Advisory Services

A couple of offline examples

Builder specialities

• Garden offices

• Loft conversions

• Tiny living solutions

• Historic home restoration

• Beachfront and Coastal Homes

• Custom treehouses

• Barn conversions

• Accessibility renovations

• Green Building and Sustainable Homes

• Energy efficient homes

Event management specialities

• Medium-sized outdoor festivals

• Online tech conferences (ok this one is online)

• 10,000 attendee tradeshows

Was this post useful? Are you already running a niche service business? Or do you disagree with this approach entirely? Let me know in the comments and let’s find better ways to build Tiny Empires together.

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If you’re looking for more help

I offer 2 video courses which go into my full process for building a 1-person 6-figure business that works around your life, not the other way round. You can learn more about both of these below:

• Tiny Empires: Build a 6-figure business with no funding and no staff: This is very different to most business courses which are geared towards growth at all costs. The Tiny Empires method focuses on building a sustainable 1-person business by understanding the business models and strategies that work for small businesses and optimizing them using tools and systems. By the end of this course, you should have a clear step-by-step path from idea to revenue, to allow you to build a business which works around your life. Learn more

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• Hire me: A few times a year, I help founders build their projects using Bubble and other no-code tools. My speciality is lean, market-ready apps. I’ve sold 4 of my own companies that were built this way. I’m currently looking for my next project. If you would like my help, drop me an email